ARCH 2220

Leaving this here for you all because I was sad not to see any reviews before I took this class! I liked Kyle because he really tried to help his students succeed and understand the material while also being nice. There are three online home quizzes throughout the semester and they are honestly pretty chill because all the answers are in the slides. You have to do two kinds of small drawing boards, and I won't lie they take a decent amount of time. I would just go to office hours to ensure my drawings were good because they are a large portion of your grade and I was fine. I do think if I wasn't an architecture major I would find this class pretty hard because of the use of programs like Rhino and Illustrator to do the drawings. In the end, a pretty chill class if you are an arch major.

Kyle is a fun lecturer who is really invested in the theory of tectonics. This field is relatively small and a lot of the subject matter is Kyle's knowledgeable interpretation of what tectonics is. The course starts off slow with a lot of historic people who discussed tectonics and then goes into the modern understanding. Each class revolves around a few key buildings that demonstrate the tectonic attitude that is being discussed that lecture. They are quite interesting, but Kyle tends to spend too much time at the beginning of lectures and then having to cram the second half in the last 10 minutes. Notes are not really necessary as everything you might want to reference is online. You can skip this class, but its not that hard to show up for this and WCA and do other work if you need to. This class is quite theoretical, but is helpful in understanding what kind of attributes a building can have and how you want to incorporate them into your studio projects. The first assignment requires an investigation into two buildings one on grounds and one in Charlottesville and contrast their attitudes. It is helpful to model them in Rhino crudely to make exploded axons and other drawings. The second project is easier and requires you to analyze one building off of a preselected list but in more detail than the first project. There are three quizzes throughout the semester as well, but they are super easy and you can quickly command f through his presentations or skim the readings to find the answers. Kyle wants you to succeed and its difficult to not to.